I don't understand why people take such a militant stand against a distro simply because they are let down by some minor feature or other. Distro hopping is the right of passage of a linux user. The first paragraph was rather disappointing and reminescent of the days I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, kicked the girlfriends dog, spilled my breakfast, then blamed poor fido for it all. Of course I recognized the error of my ways!
Makes me wonder what would happen if I told my girlfriend that shes wasting time out of her life that she'll never get back painting her face and her toe nails. Perhaps it'll be the day I meet my maker. Do you think software developers waste their life doodling or otherwise twiddling thier fingers?
Canonical and other commercially supported distros have their individual objectives based on their target markets. Everyone's searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. @Fahad not even Mandriva is like Windows that is developed in absolute secrecy. Each piece of software including the kernel has upstream developers, meaning that it is not owned by Mandriva, Ubuntu, etc. What this means is that the key success factors (KSFs) of each distribution lie in the packaging (aka distribution) and pretty much none of the components mentioned except the control panel and integration scripts are unique.
My attraction to Mandriva was the easy to use integrated control panel; but SuSe Linux, which I dumped for Mandriva also had this. I continued to use Mandriva, in spite of the fact that 9.1 trashed my entire drive, up till I was unable to compile the madwifi drivers using the generic source. It was probably my fault for being a cheapskate and not paying for precompiled packages.
Mandriva has evolved into its own meta-distribution such that generic RPMs for many packages are broken if installed without making changes specific to Mandriva such as file locations, etc. This is not me pointing an accusing finger at Mandriva for anything, its just that every distro has its way of doing things and the top distros make risky moves at the expense of appearing like bullys. For instance you mention go-oo, then just read the wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go-oo), I couldn't make this stuff up.
People will always vilify distribitions for upstream problems without realising that upstream projects are actually understaffed and underfunded. Project owners have to keep the lights on, feed the girlfriend ... find time to walk fido before he begins bitting. It doesn't help your fellow users to say "ditch the earth tones" and seek refuge elsewhere.
What I found most helpful is to:
1. Become an advocate. Encourage people to experiment with different distros; each distro has a uniqueness that touches a soul.
2. Become a good steward. Support your favorite distro by reading/making bug reports or submitting fixes; don't just whine do something about it.
3. Become a mentor. Publish something under GPL/LGPL/CCL/,etc. to help thy neighbor - a how to, a template, clip art, themes.
4. Practise waht you preach. Try to exercise some of Richard Stallman's freedoms, you'll be surprised that many people complain about absolutely nothing. As a newbie recompiling changes in a kernel module for wifi and reintegrating the changes was exhillerating and a liberating experience.
5. Define linux rather than let it define you. Don't tip toe around the system, burn it in. Most people never realise the full potantial of their linux system because they like to show it off. Linux is about increasing your freedom and potential. If you're a geek try the various forms of virtualization, perhaps you love to make your own music, short movies and podcasts, seriously, "there's an app for that." Let you work speak for Linux; when you wow someone let it be because you have increased his/her potential too.

I've been using Mandriva/Mandrake since version 6. Still have the boxed set of version 6 disks. I've tried many other distro's and always come back to Mandriva. It has always been a great clean looking distro with added features that make it very usable for any application.

Their control center is awesome, if there is any selling point, that's it. And another great thing is that their added features work in any environment. KDE, GNOME, LXDE,,, All work and look great out of the box.

Way to go Mandriva. Keep up the good work.

For last 3 years, I was using different flavour of linux.But I like mandriva.The feature I like with mandriva is less boot time,offline multie media codecs,well integration with compiz-fusion,well performance and stable version as compare to others.More over , the powerpack version of mandriva awesome.I hope , the further release will be more stable and more secure.It should be no 1 in linux OS kingdom.

Steve said: "Mandriva One comes with all those codecs that you need out-of-the-box."

Are you new? I have used Mandriva before, and the only thing it came with was flash. I had to install all the gstreamer codecs myself. Don't try to spread misinformation to make ubuntu look bad. Plus, how hard is it to install codecs on any distro? If it's tough for you, I suggest Linux Mint.

But I am looking forward to trying out the new Mandriva.

I actually like the look and feel of Mandriva, but I decided to go with another distro due to wireless difficulties...sounds like they have been resolved with the new distro so I am excited to download it and give it a spin.

i think about moving to kde desktop instead of gnome

i need a really good KDE distro
Kubuntu is useless

may be i try opensuse 11.2 or Mandriva

I like Mandriva, it is consistently the best KDE around although I did in the past put my newbies on its offshoot PCLinuxOS (which is now still stuck on 3.5 which was a wonderful desktop but now feels dated) so I look forward to its release.

No, not for the themes or wallpaper or other shallow reasons since I have never met a default I liked. I hate the new light taskbar but it never matterd because there is choice galore. Slim Glow is my theme, my window is Keramik because it makes bigger buttons when fonts are made bigger, I make the taskbar disappear on every desktop I have and when its active, its about 2-3 inches thick so I can see the text/icons better with fonts in the 16 to 22pt range and I set my wallpaper to change every 10mins.
My desktop looks like I want it to look, my way, not some designer who wants everything 8pt fonts and worried about lines and flow.

That said, the first thing I will do with 2010 is get rid of Novell's Open Office fork they are using for some reason.
(I spit on the floor like my greek neighbour does when I say that.)

Im writing this from Kubuntu 9.04 on my test machine btw, so Im not a homer but Mandriva really is much better.
I wont die from using Kubuntu and I cant wait to say one day that theyre all the same (its close and really the desktop choice is a much bigger decision that which distro to use) but how can fanbois claim user friendliness when they still use the ugly DOS like dual boot black and white option box? How user friendly is that?
First time I rebooted my cousins computer after I installed Buntu for him, he saw the BW options and said "Oh no, what happened?"
A coworker also had the same comment about Bubuntu user-friendliness when he installed 9,04 on his mom's netbook and every time she lifts the lid to reopen the computer she is greated by a text message claiming to 'killing requests for dead queue'. Not the sort of thing a 72 yr old grandmother wants to see every time.

I dont bash things like a child jealous of his siblings attention, I am a distro whore with a preferences for KDE.
Stop taking criticism of your 'precious' personally. I like vanilla, you like chocolate. The reason there is a Buntu backlash is the joyous exuberance of Linux newbies has been replaced by a Mac-like fanboi atittude that they invented the wheel.
You can like your favorite distros and identify with it (heck, people identify themselves with logos and pay for the privilege to wear them) but stop pretending that distro A is so much better than B.
They're not.

My less important reason for supporting Mandriva is the path theyve taken. It is a publicly held company, responsible to shareholders. I hope that it does well enough for other distros to do the same if it works out. A role model of sorts that others could emulate would be beneficial to all as opposed to hoping for a generous benefactor (put away the blades, Flyboy is one of the best defenders of free software and often espouses the 'what's good for one is good for all of us' mentality).

I cant wait to see how well Live upgrade works and its about time Plymouth came around..

The only negative feature of Mandriva has been the default style and windeco. Its clunky and outdated. The default Oxygen theme is good enough for a start. What's more, Mandriva forces you to have its default theme. If you try and remove it, several required/desirable KDE4 packages are marked for removal as well!

Default theme must go ... otherwise, I agree with all points above and would highly recommend Mandriva for all those looking for a polished KDE4 distro.

Good to see there is still interest for Mandriva out there. I am a Mandriva user since 2000, and I never stopped using it, but since Ubuntu it's userbase was shrinking.

I like you review and I have only small thing to observe. Point 2,4,10 were already present in 2009.1 ;)